After six hours of deliberation Friday, a Boulder County jury adjourned for the weekend and will return next week to consider the fate of Jeffrey Neering, a homeless man charged with attempted second-degree murder and first-degree assault in connection with a late-night attack on University Hill last year.

In their closing arguments, prosecutors said Neering ambushed and slit the throat of Jason Patrick Chilson after a confrontation earlier in the night, while Neering's attorneys said the wound likely was an accidental result of the brawl between Neering and the victim's friends.

Police say Neering, 28, got into an argument with Chilson and his friend Oliver Burns outside of K's China in the late-night hours of Aug. 4, 2011, and a bartender breaking up the fight testified he heard Neering say "somebody's getting cut."

"A threat was made on a staircase, and minutes later an ambush on a dark street on an unsuspected victim," Deputy District Attorney Karen Lorenz told the jury. "Once he leaves the bar, there is no one to stop him from carrying out his threat."

The emergency room doctor who treated Chilson that night said the cut was millimeters from severing one of the major blood vessels in Chilson's neck.

"This is not an 'incident,'" Lorenz said. "When you stab someone's throat that is not an 'incident.' That is attempted murder and first-degree assault."

According to police, Burns then tackled Neering and a brawl ensued before bouncers were able to break up the fight. Neering left the scene and was found the next day staying at an empty apartment unit.

But David Moorhead, Neering's attorney, said no one ever saw a knife or knew how Chilson got the neck wound. Chilson was intoxicated at the time of the incident and remembered getting hit from behind but did not remember having his throat cut.

"(Chilson) was the victim of something," Moorhead said. "The question is, 'Who did it?,' and the more important question is, 'How did it happen?'"

Moorhead also noted that no weapon was ever found on the scene or on Neering. The only weapon ever recovered was a pocket knife that was in Burns' pocket.

Moorhead said the knife never was properly tested to see whether it could have cut Chilson's throat during the "drunken brawl" that ensued.

"What you cannot do is rule out the possibility that knife was used," Moorhead said. "Mr. Neering becomes the suspect and Boulder police, from that point on, refuse to entertain the thought this happened any other way."

But Deputy District Attorney Karen Peters played a recording in which Neering can be heard telling his father while in jail that he "deserved to get punished."

"You don't go for someone's neck unless you are trying to kill him," Peters said. "If not for Oliver Burns, he might have succeeded."

The jurors were granted an extra hour to deliberate but adjourned at 6 p.m. with no verdict. They will return to continue deliberations on Monday.

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